then speeches from past democratic conventions. >> c-span's deviled double coverage of the democratic convention starts this week. every minute, every speech, live on c-span, c-span radio, and online at c-span.org featured speakers tuesday night include san antonio mayor julian castro and first lady michelle obama. wednesday, elizabeth warren and former president bill clinton. thursday, vice president joe biden and president barack obama. use our convention have to make an share video clips. >> in the end, that is what this election is about. do we participate in a politics of cynicism, or to participate in a politics of hope? john kerry called on us to hope. john edwards calls on us to hope. i am not talking about blind optimism, the almost willful

ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if you do not think about it, or our health care crisis will solve itself if we ignore it. i am talking about something more substantial. >> connect with other c-span viewers with twitter and google hangouts/ c-span.org/campaign2012. >> the british house of commons returns from its summer recess this week. you can see prime minister's questions live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span 2, and again at 9:00 p.m. eastern and pacific time. >> next, vice president biden on the campaign trail in green bay, wisconsin. he pointed out differences between the obama administration policy on taxes, medicare, and health care, than those of presidential candidate mitt romney. this was held at the national

railroad museum. [applause] hello, green bay. before i begin, i have to make an admission. whoever set this up as a soft spot in my heart. i and the biggest railroad guy you have never -- ever known. i have travelled round trip from wilmington, delaware to washington d.c., 215 miles, over 7900 times. i am a railroad guy. [cheers and applause] 86 years, every day, never lived in washington. came home to see that great son of mine, his brother and sister, my grandkids. it is great to be here.

by the way, i heard you have a team here. [cheers and applause] i heard it when i was in eighth grade. let me tell you why. green bay has always had a special place in my heart. the heart of all the guys that i went to a catholic boys' school with. i went to 12 years of catholic grade school and high school. my school was taught by an order of priests -- you have heard of them. i want to tell you, i know you know they have reason to fear -- we always started home room with a prayer. at our school it was in the name of the father, the son, the holy ghost, vince lombardi, it would go from there. [cheers and applause] i tell you, homer and in the fall at the academy was a lot different than any other time of the year.

that was when we learned the names of the 12 apostles. bart starr, paul harding, jimmy taylor, willie davis, you get the point. that is all we heard about. you think i'm kidding? i am not kidding. you know, you see, this is how it works. our headmaster was from wisconsin. the headmaster's name was justin denny. he said sign everything jed. he -- we called in the head jed. he came in on the p a system in the morning and would say, gentlemen, the packers won yesterday. therefore there will be no less period today. [cheers and applause] that is why we love the packers. if it was not your favorite team, it was your number to team, i promise you.

let me start by recognizing a great congressman who i believe will soon be your next great senator, tammy baldwin. [cheers and applause] i would like to recognize all the elected officials here and thank him for coming, but particularly jaime. you are the next congressman. [cheers and applause] i just want to make sure, because i know how important members of the house and senate are. i recognize you. i do not want you to pretend i did not know you when you were there. brett, thank you for that generous introduction. it is an honor to be with bread. to be with a real labor guy, and organized labor guy, on the eve of labor day. [cheers and applause] i know how to say unions.

[cheers and applause] i got elected because of unions. the steelworkers were the first union to ever endorse me. but there is something more special about -- more special, this guy was an aviator in one of the most celebrated divisions of the united states army, the screaming angels in the hundred first division. these guys are real. thank you for your years of service. folks, this country, as you all know -- i apologize. i have been here half an hour. i want you to know that. i do not want any record-setting i was late. the good news was that there were 250 people still trying to get in. i apologize for you all standing this long. to state the obvious, this

country faces the starkest choice for president in my memory. now that governor ryan -- excuse me, governor romney and congressman ryan have been nominated -- we need your votes. now that they are a team, and i mean this sincerely, those stark differences are even more stark. congressman ryan has now given an absolutely clear definition to governor romney's of get commitments that he made in the last year and a half. i mean that seriously. we sort of have to incumbent parties. we know exactly what the other team is going to do. i am not joking. the reason we know that is that the house republican party has already passed the rhine budget. they have already put in place everything that romney says he is promising to do for the whole nation. all you have to do is take a

look. take a look at what they did. we are going to point out what they did in that republican house. it is honestly the best way to show the difference. they call their plan new. bold. gutsy. but the neighborhood i come from, there is nothing gutsy about giving $1 trillion in tax cuts for millionaires only. look, there is nothing bold about cutting medicare and turning it into a voucher system in order to pay for cuts and taxes for millionaires. what is new about their plan? not only is it not new, it is not fair, it is simply not right. it will not grow the economy. how do we know? they tried that before. and did not work. we have seen this movie before. we know how it ends. [cheers and applause]

events in lost jobs -- it ends in lost jobs, stagnant wages, watching your home equity a evaporate, watching your retirement account to decimated. it ends in a catastrophe for the middle-class. it ends in a great recession of 2008. listen to the theme they are running on -- i quote, "restore the dreams and greatness of this country." why do we have to restore those dreams and greatness? what they are not telling you is who took them away. what they are not telling you is the very proposals that they voted for the past 13 years -- the very economic policies the governor supported, they are the

very policies that put america's greatness in jeopardy. ladies and gentlemen, at the convention he talked about the state of the nation, all these terrible things that happened in 2009. how do they think we got there? no really, think about it. do they think we have amnesia? how do they think this happens? did they just fall from the sky on september 15, 2008, when lehman brothers went under? ladies and gentlemen, my grandson, his little sister is a little older. she would say, did casper the friendly ghost do it? who did it? how did we get here? there is a lot more they did not tell you about. when congressman ryan was elected in 1988 -- 1998 and

took office in 1999, there was a democratic demonstration. we had a balanced budget. the middle-class was thriving. what they did not say was that, the day we were sworn in, before the president sat behind his desk in his office, he was handed a tab for $1 trillion in datasets for that year before we got started. -- deficits for that year before we got started. the american middle-class was devastated. much of what they did tell you was not on the level at that convention. you heard congressman ryan on wednesday night blame the president -- listen to this. he blamed the president because the recommendation of a bipartisan debt commission that we appointed were not acted on. the so-called simpson bowles

commission. he said the president appointed this commission and the recommendations were never carried out. what he did not tell you is that he sat on that commission. he sat on that commission. he and his house republican friends that he leads -- had they voted with the commission, it would have been voted on. he voted no. he would not let it go to the floor. [cheers and applause] he walked away. by the way, the commission he is talking about recommended a balanced approach to bring down our debt and control the debt crisis. here is what they said. they said, we recommend you cut $3 in spending for every dollar in revenue that you raise. ae president's plan calls for similar approach.

with governor romney and congressman ryan -- they reject that balanced approach. romney has repeatedly said that he would reject any deal to bring down the debt that included $10 in spending cuts, even if it adds only $1 in tax cuts for the wealthy. congressman ryan failed to mention any of that. convenient omission, i would say. i love these guys. i love these guys, how they claim to care about the deficit. when we left office, it was in balance. ladies and gentlemen, the thing i'm most love -- i most love, how they discovered the middle- class at their convention. all of a sudden their heart was pleading for the middle-class. i was impressed.

i thought, where have i been during the last four years? i must have gotten it all wrong. listen to what congressman ryan had to say in his convention speech. he is a good guy, by the way, a great father, as is romney. they are great man. he said, and i quote, "the truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves." that is what he said. well, let's measure what he and governor romney want to do for those who cannot defend or care for themselves. the best way to do that, as my dad would say -- he has a great expression, he would say, do not tell me what you value, show me your budget. i will tell you what you value.

show me your budget. i will tell you what you value. well, folks, let's take a look at their budget. to understand what they value. massive cuts in medicaid. throwing 19 million people off health care, including 1 million seniors and several million children. i am not making this stuff up. massive cuts in medicare. let's be honest here -- what the president and i are talking about is protecting medicare. i find it fascinating that these guys expect people to believe that guys like me have spent our whole lives, my party has been our whole time generating, creating, caring for medicare -- we are somehow against it now and they are for it. they have been against it and

wanting to do less of it for the past 40 years. when governor romney and congressman ryan are talking about creating a new system, what some call a voucher-care system, that is what it is. the system will replace the medicare system. it will give seniors a stipend, a voucher, worth less than at their medicare costs now. that will say to them, you go out there and shop for the best insurance you can buy with this voucher. the best deal -- that is what it is. you would think i was making it up if i were not so serious. my mom, god love her, lived until 93. she was at the last convention. she was a smart woman. my mom, i cannot picture handing her a voucher at age 80 and say, go out into the insurance market

and figure out what is best for you. ladies and gentlemen, it is just that simple. we are for medicare. we ought -- they are for voucher care. they offer massive cuts in social security for future generations. massive cuts in education. and eliminating tax cuts to send your kids to college. tens of thousands of people in this stage take advantage of that to keep your kids in school. pell grants, they cut them by an average of $1,000 to the one -- 9 million working-class kids in college now. benefiting themselves and soon to benefit america. these are the facts. they get rid of obamacare. what does that mean? insurance companies are back in charge of their health care, a magic -- allowing them to cut off your health care when you get sick or they hate what you call their -- they call your limit. allowing them to change the

rates they charge for win versus man. -- women vs. men. knocking at 6 million young adults of the parents coverage. this is not your father's republican party. for real. this is a different breed of cat. this is not even mitt romney's father's republican party. [applause] and by the way, there is another thing they did not tell you at their convention. they did not tell you why they were even separating all these efforts to help working class and middle-class people of america. they are doing it all in the service of massive tax cuts to the very wealthy. we use phrases like massive -- there is another elected official. let me give you two specific

examples. $500 billion of the extension of the bush tax cuts for the wealthy goes to 120,000 families. did you hear what i just said? one half of $1 trillion will go to 120,000 american families. on top of that, they want to add another $250,000 of tax cuts per year for everyone making $1 million or more. look, they talked about the middle-class at their convention. what they did not tell you is that this tax policy carries a big price tag. as the non-partisan tax center points out, middle-class families with children will pay an average of $2,000 a year more to pay for those tax cuts for

families. that is a fact. on top of that, governor romney says his first 100 days he would repeal wall street reform. he let the banks began to write their own roles again. what he briefly said about foreign policy in his speech -- in iraq, where my son served, we lost fallen angels. 32,227 wounded. 16,000 requiring care for the rest of their lives. romney said it was a mistake to end that war by bringing home our workers. in afghanistan, we have lost

1980 fallen angels as of yesterday. i am precise because every single one of those lives deserves recognition. god only knows what happened in those last 24 hours. [cheers and applause] as of yesterday, 17,382 boris have been wounded -- of our warriors have been wounded. romney thought of the decision of the president of the united states, we have other countries working with us, nato and afghanistan. the president organized it. all 50 of them said it is time to hand over responsibility to the afghans and bring our 90,000 troops home.

what did romney say? he said, that was a mistake. i have seen these warriors. i have traveled in and out of afghanistan and iraq over 20 times. i have seen these kids -- not kids, i have seen these men and women. i have been in the operating base above the mountains and the valley with six kids getting shot at every single night. cold and people off. i have been out there in those armored humvees, the scorching desert. i wish every american could see what i saw on the strips.

they raise their right hand with a recruiter and said, i want to join, knowing almost certainly that they would go to iran or afghanistan. -- iran or afghanistan. this is one of the finest generations in the history of america. they should be recognized. and they are. [cheers and applause] we only have one sacred obligation -- we have a lot of obligations, only once sacred obligation. to protect those we sent to war and care for them when they come home. now, now we want to move -- he wants to move from cooperation

with russia to confrontation with putin's russia. these guys say president obama is out of touch? untold millions in the cayman islands. swiss bank accounts. out of touch? whoa. what romney and ryan its bows, and i know they believed it and mean it -- what they espouse is a social policy of the 1960's, a foreign policy out of the cold war, and economic policies that brought us the great recession. this is no time to work -- turn back. we must continue working for. our very standard of living is at stake. i am asking you -- there is not a single doubt in my mind that we are on our way to rebuild in this country, stronger than it was before. [cheers and applause]

i am absolutely certain we are on the way to rebuilding the middle class, more vibrant than it was before the recession. i know, given half a chance, the american people have never let the country down. [cheers and applause] we believe in the american people. i know you. we know you. it has never, never, never been a good bet to bet against america. [cheers and applause] so ladies and gentlemen, join us. help us finish what we started. with your help, we will win wisconsin and we will win the presidency. thank you all. may god bless you, and may god protect our troops on wisconsin. [cheers and applause] ♪ ♪

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♪ >> watch gavel-to-gavel coverage of the democrat convention from charlotte, north carolina. every minute, every speech. live on c-span. next, a discussion about southern voters in the election. then speeches from past democratic conventions, including hillary clinton in 1996 and edward kennedy in 1980. gavelspan's gavel-to- coverage of the democratic convention starts this week. every minute, every speech, live

on c-span, c-span radio, and online at c-span.org. the two speakers tuesday night include san antonio mayor julian castro and first lady michelle obama. wednesday, massachusetts senate candidate elizabeth warren and former president oakland in. thursday, vice president joe biden and president barack obama. >> in the end, that is what this election is about. do we participate in a the politics of cynicism, or do we participate in a politics of hope? john f. kerry calls on us to hope. john edwards calls on us to hope. i am not talking about blind optimism, the willful ignorance that is unemployment will go away if we do not think about it. or that health care will solve itself if we do in -- just ignore it. i am talking about something

more substantial. >> connect with other c-span viewers with twitter and google hangouts. convention hub at c- span.org/campaign2012. >> a lot of the shows i like watching our book tv. anything happening now, anything live. i am looking for things -- the supreme court ruling, the fallout from that, anything that is raw and unfiltered. you do not have to worry about commentary or talking heads. it is unfiltered. it is pure. >> cody watches c-span on at time warner cable. c-span -- created by cable companies in 1979. brought to you as a public service by your television provider. >> the "charlotte observer" and university of north carolina in chapel hill posted a discussion on seven politics in between trough election. judy woodruff let the

discussion with a we jig with professors on current trends influencing southern politics, the election, and the future of the south. this is about an hour and 15 minutes. >> i'm judy woodruff. i am delighted to be here. i want to thank scott with pew and others for such a terrifically informative kickoff to this conversation. i saw so many people taking notes. you'll be swarmed with people who will have questions and will be looking with your -- at your web sites, anything else they can get to get beat their hands on information. i want to thank my longtime friend susan king, who heads the journalism and communications school at university of north carolina. if you are wondering why she asked a duke graduate to moderate this discussion, i would tell you it is because i promised to be on good behavior.

i would not wear any blue devil paraphernalia. we are dear friends. i am really glad to be here. i will tell you this quickly. i came from a brief rehearsal over at the convention, the time warner arena with my colleague. we are preparing to enter all week for pbs. live coverage of the convention. it looks great over there. they have done a good job of setting it up. we will see how things go. i am really thrilled to be here. this is such an extraordinary group of thinkers and writers and scholars who you will have a chance to hear from. i want to get the program off right away. i also want to thank the "charlotte observer" for generously posting this. one of the nation's great newspapers. i spent some of my years in the south grown up. i went to college here in the south. i really do have a long time

special interest in this part of the country. i have long been aware of how, i think, it is not really a part of the country that is well understood. i am particularly -- it is so often caricatured. i think my goal this morning is to bring some clarity to that and this is the perfect grupo folks to do that. let's plunge in and -- we will open it up to all of you for questions and comments. the only journalist out there i may not call on is my husband, al hunt. the guy with the white hair. he is an executive editor for bloomberg news in washington. i have to decide whether i will let him ask questions. at any event, let's start with you. you have done newspapering, you have been in government. u.s. state department spokesman during the carter administration. you come from a greek newspaper family in mississippi, where you

stood for the new south. -- a great newspaper in mississippi, where you stood for the new south. were you see the party in 2012? >> the party and its position in 2012. >> i think i unblocking everybody's the -- i may step off. >> each of us were told we had three minutes. proportionate to each of our predecessors have and 10 minutes each. if i do the math, that means i have 16 minutes. given the amount of time each of them took for their 10 minutes. i will not use that 15 minutes. i am neither a scholar nor a person who has studied the figures during much. this will be impressionistic, so you can put down your pants. in 1928, my grandfather came back from voting in the presidential election and announced to his sons that he could not help himself, he had

voted democrat. why was that a surprise? the democratic party had begun the process of deserting the south's instincts for a more national constituency and it had nominated a catholic. an impossible thing for the very protestant ethos and ethics and politics represented by some of these charts. he voted nonetheless, a man of rigorous prejudice when it came to race and religion, nonetheless voted democratic. they stated democratic in 32. they were not offered any reason ought not to, since the way roosevelt ran was conservative. this date in 36 because they were not sure. thereafter, began the long, slow unraveling of a passionate love affair and marriage which was completed, as was said by two

predecessors, by 1980. the divorce did not just happen like that. it was a response to any number of changes, not in the south, but in the rest of the country and in the democratic party specifically. at each stage of the divorce proceedings, what you had first was what seemed to be an unchanging south and a deliberate affront to faithful love and regard. in 1948, the democrats went forward with a civil-rights platform which mr. truman was passionately interested in, much to the shock of his many supporters who had gone with him for vice president precisely because he was no liberal. suddenly it turns out that he is. we have the dxiecrat walk out --

dixiecrat walked out and a brand new reflection of disaffection in the south. we also had in that 1948 walkout the predicate for something else, wch is the growing republican interest in the south. a different kind of interest. my dad in 1952 goes with eisenhower. he goes with eisenhower because eisenhower represents the new south. and urban, a moderate conservative south which will break the iron grip of the one- party system. a lot of people -- not a lot, but certain types in the metropolitan south were there. of course, eisenhower does relatively well. in any case, he establishes in the eisenhower years that it is possible for swing states to be

republican. all of a sudden, you look at these sudden blips on the chart in which a virginia or florida votes republican. they are being cultivated in a way that republicans have never bothered with in the past post- civil war era. the old dixiecrat crowd is not the eisenhower crowd. the democratic party gets a great gift in both the election of the catholic who are governor here was one of the few major democrats in the south to endorse in the 1960 election. you elect the catholic, which is a direct repudiation of what much of the white protestant south once. a catholic, despite himself, and i mean it, suddenly finds himself endorsing civil-rights

which are anathema to most of the south. with his assassination and the accession of the democrat from texas, a man of great ambition, mr. johnson, the passage of civil rights acts, each one of which, whether housing, voting, public accommodations, says to the south, we just want to put your face in it. i say the white south. nixon comes along. there is much conversation about the southern strategy. by that time you did not need to be very smart to know that the south had had enough. there was george wallace, who had run a couple of times for presidency and was discovering that not southerners, but lots of others, were not amused by certain changes in the democratic party. i will emphasize this over and

over. the democratic party is changing dramatically. the south is not, at that point. so along comes the period of this slowly building data. -- death, not merely of a marriage, but of a number of other relationships. nixon winds. -- wins. he is not hurt by the fact that there is another candidate, but a democrat has no possibility of anything in the south. a strange thing happens, of course. the democratic party gets even more to the left as far as the rest of the country is concerned. along comes the mcgovern election. i remember it well. i was traveling with something called the grasshopper special,

similar to the lady bird special from the 1964 election. we were serious about covering the south. we spoke at the north carolina state fair. so help me, that wonderful, silly man came and spoke with us. thereby guaranteeing that he had a sitting target. he was one of two incumbent democrats in the south to came at. all of the others had enough sense to hide. they knew that at this point the party was dead in the water. the other person who came out to see us was jimmy carter, who came out of the front door of the capitol and greeted us. i thought, what is this idiot doing? he cannot be serious. all right.

72, a lot of us are looking around and saying that the only way the democrats can win is to find a southerner. of course, a lot of us thought we had found one. that was a dry stream, as you remember. i nominated him after he was dead at the democratic convention. i was glad i did and happy we had the chance to do it. he led the way to jimmy carter. jimmy been no full had come out knowing -- he stood with the party in an impossible place. jimmy actually carries much of the south. if you take out the third party he would have carried out more states he lost in that particular election. that is it. that is it for the democrats. the two glamour boys are baptist white southern politics -- bill clinton and al gore. they cannot and do not carry the south. do not look for the state they

carry. e. one not find many. the reason the national party had been walking -- in igor election, he did not lose florida. all he had to do was carry new hampshire. he would have carried without a single southern state. by that moment, the reversal was total in american politics. a democratic party which had to have the solid south to do anything and republican party which used to win without it, now there is a republican party that has to have the solid south and a democratic party that does not have to have it to win. in the national election. this is a fundamental change. in the politics of america, and certainly in the south. if your it -- if you are a democrat in the deep south, it meant you were in a wilderness. i looked up at my dad in heaven and say, is this enough of a

two-party system for you? this has gotten completely wrong. an extraordinarily good piece of work, talking about the possibility of a new marriage built entirely on something -- this is the final point i want to make -- the south of that marriage has begun to seem fundamentally changed, the chain's the north of the old marriage underwent for some time, in which it underwrote -- wrote off the south. this new south, emerging, economically vital -- a south that unlike the south of the past, not static in its population base. not the same black and white voters looking at each other. vast streams of people no longer tied by history or habits to the past, whether they are yankees coming in, hispanics coming in,

black folks coming back, you name it. it is a different place entirely. we are practically american now in the way that we have come out of being frozen in our population and have become a dynamic, at least in the way our population works. my grandfather does literally turn over in his grave all the time. he could not pull an eagle today. they do not pull eagles in louisiana. a lot of folks who are now southerners can, in fact, come to grips with the new south. believe me. nobody is willing to talk honestly about race, it needs to be said at least occasionally that it was not a small thing that 3 southern states voted for obama. it was an incredible and revolutionary thing. almost as revolutionary as a

nation which had never been able to find themselves to actually think that the head of the line was a black candidate. we are simply no longer the place that in the days of the early marriage, the romance -- that is true nationally, as well as the south. i have no idea what happens in the long term. in the short term, it is still the republicans to lose in a basic way. the changes have not yet become magnified. elsewhere, it is around this place, this campus, they will have more sessions on the blue south. a lot of folks who have hopes of creating the democratic approach that will not offend so many white southerners. there are my friends. i wish them luck. i do not see how it works, but i hope it can. without doing violence. i did not go 20 minutes, but i

tried. [laughter] >> thank you for that terrific political look at the south. i turned next to peter, who is a historian. you have focused on the economic health of this region. talk about how this global marketplace has changed the way of life here. >> thank you, judy. it is always hard to follow carter. i have done this a number of times. i will this be myself and try to talk a little bit about the way in which the south has transformed. i am more pessimistic about the south and and some other speakers. gene may be as pessimistic as i am. i am an economic historian. you might wonder what that is. it has been defined by one of

your own as a person who loves numbers but lacks the sufficient charm, greece, or wish to become an accountant. [laughter] that is made. what i would like -- that is me. i would like to talk about some of the forces that have created the south about which i am so pessimistic. a few points. one, the forces that created the sun belt south between 1945 and the early 1980's have been largely sat. the key to the sun belt south during that period, considered as a whole, was the removal of a huge number of workers out of a very backward and inefficient and low-skill undercapitalized every cultural sector. into other sectors, particularly where there are unskilled labor that could be employed more efficiently. these sectors were for the most part low-skill, low value-added

manufacturing industries, particularly those of an assembly or basic processes in nature rather than metal fabrication and things like that. such industries -- textiles, apparel, light industry -- by adding capital to human labor, they significantly increase productivity, which allowed for rising wages, rising income, rising living standards for more and more of the sap's population. the region was -- the south's population. the region was following a time tested a development strategy that most parts of the developed world had experienced once they develop. basically, a move out of agriculture into light industry. by the 1980's, this strategy began to play itself out. as technological change rendered labor requirements of seven manufacturing reduced, jobs were

increasingly lost to other lower-cost parts of the world due to globalization, the sun belt's convergence upon at national economic norms slowed before it can do is stop completely in the early 1990's. southern per capita income has not converged upon national norms since the early 1990's. it is 91% of the nation as a whole. median household income in north carolina has actually fallen over past years, putting us 40's in the nation as a whole. -- 40's in the nation as a whole. the lead story we see about the south, the rise of the so-called sun belt, it was quite misleading or at least incomplete. as the policy think tank that they talked about earlier put in a report in 1986, there were always, and even then, shadows

in the sunbelt, particularly in rural parts of the region. with the decline of light industry, it often collapsed completely in these areas, accelerating in the 1990's and the first decade of the 21st century, many of these areas have essentially become economic basket cases. forlorn if not hopeless. beset by every unmatchable social pathology. places where the best economic development strategy is often, as an economist friend of mine said, a one at which a bus ticket out and a ham sandwich. the metro area as he talked about, financial centers such as charlotte, i.t. hubs such as rtp, places where the cree to class lives, tourist areas, affluent retirement areas,

energy rich areas, areas around government centers, military bases, universities, they have done better, increasingly pulling away from the non- metropolitan parts of the south. in many ways, what we see looks like what many development economists call a middle income trap, similar to places like thailand and malaysia today and brazil earlier, where an economy stagnates after reaching a middle level, usually because their cost structure is no longer allowing them to compete with lower-cost areas but the labor forces are not skilled enough to compete fire up the chain. in an international context, the southern labor force is expensive and not very skilled. that is a problem we have to deal with. last week, there was a article

in "the new york times" about the textile industry of bangladesh. they pointed out that minimum wage is $37 a month for textile workers. they work in minimum of 200 hours a month. that is 18.5 cents an hour. they have basically the same equipment as our apparel workers have in the south, which is one major reason why in bangladesh -- bangladesh is the leading supplier to the world of atomic hilfiger, the gap, h &m, et cetera. it should not surprise us that north carolina and the south have been hit extremely hard by the recession of two dozen date. north carolina has an unemployment rate of 9.6%. considerably higher than the 8.3% of the u.s. as a whole.

it is the fifth-highest in the entire united states. my institute put out a recent study. you will see that every part of the state, every income -- income group, every job classification, every age, they had it been hit hard -- have been hit hard by this recession. the structural factors, combined with the problems of charlotte's financial sector, what happened with wachovia and wells fargo, the collapse of the construction industry, and, ironically, continuing robust in the migration, that has all meant that the labor market in north carolina has been tremendously stressed, e especially since it never really recovered from the 2000-2001 recession. the most binding a study we completed is that since 2000,

north carolina has added 0.3% jobs. the states as a whole have gained -- the state has gained 25% in a population -- population varie. this is the backdrop for the fall elections. one way or another, the south is going to emerge economically out of this age of rapid technological change and globalization. southern workers have to become more skilled. whether or not there is the political will to bring this about is a key question. we put out a report in which we entitled it, "moving beyond," and what we have to do is develop multiple pathways to insure post secondary education for all north carolinians southerners' so we can move up the value chain and create a future for this part of the

united states. thank you. [applause] >> an intriguing idea. you can see what a rich collection of ideas. i wish we had hours and hours to talk, but i see the clock ticking. i will turn to you next. a law professor. you have spoken, among other things, on voting rights. i want you to give us insight into all this emphasis we are seeing in the news on the new voting rights laws that have come up in a number of states. how are these voter i.d. requirements going to effect this campaign. are these laws going to have a bigger effect on the -- in the south? in pennsylvania, ohio, florida, parts of the south -- give us a sense of this. >> thank you. since i am a native southerner, although i have not been a

native southerner as long, i will not have as much to say. he has far more smart to say. i will keep my comments short. let me respond to your question by emphasizing a couple of things that add to what some of the wonderful background is that all the speakers have offered. in general, north carolina has a particular place, even among southern states. it is something -- three southern states voted for the president. it is important to see the important distinctions here in north carolina, politically speaking. they separated from even other southern states. it is in the peripheral south. we have heard a lot about the commercial and banking industries here, which are not present in a large part of the south. the fact that there is a population of folks coming in and out. the important point that it to

the question -- the one that judy asked. one, there is serious party contestation in the state, notwithstanding the direct point that republicans have had a foothold in this region. north carolina has not fit that trend as easily as a lot of other states. i am from alabama. this is the one state where you have 12 years of uninterrupted democratic control of the government see. you cannot have another state where that is true. there is also, in this state, at least until 2010, democratic control of the state legislature. not something you can see in a lot of other southern states. the last point, and this gets to voting rights, there is a very significant presence of racial coalition building here. we talk about barack obama putting a coalition together. that has been true in north carolina for some time among folks, both black and white, who compete on the democratic side.

this last -- the current state legislature, there are seven african-americans in the state senate. none of them report -- represent a majority african- american constituencies. you'll not see that strong a pattern in other southern states. that is a trend that is likely to be changed. it is likely to be changed because a party competition. we finished redistricting that was controlled by the republican party. their goal was to go back to be pew center to make the republican party a largely white party, but to make it the largest constituency among democratic voters african american. we know the differences between african-americans and whites -- if we make this a racially divided election, that always means the democrat party will lose. they managed to do it this time using the division of district lines. ironically, i will to say this,

it is because according to them they think that federal law requires them to do so. you will not hear many instances where you hear the republican party talking about the importance of following a federal mandate, but this is one of them. you see their intent to compete. these sorts of fights are really about party competition and their efforts to make a lasting impression on the south. this is one area where voting rights is going to be very important. the district has ended, but the court so that's going to be an important question that comes up during the course of the year. two other issues that are going to be relevant to the upcoming election involve voter i.d. laws. republicans have also taken basically a template that was devised in conservative think tanks and taken it around to a large number of statements to be adopted in the president's election, so you can only cast a ballot if you present photo i.d. of a certain type issued by

a government to indicate you are who you say you are. now, it turns out that most of the folks who don't have access to the photo i.d., who currently don't have things like a driver's license include the poor and the elderly and non- white citizens, it will have an effect in metropolitan areas getting access to voter i.d., which is not an easy thing to do, in many cases where you have to pay for it. there's litigation going on around that. in many cases it's not quite clear whether or not that is going to be in place for the upcoming election. one reason that's not likely to be as significant in the south as it is elsewhere is because of the application of the voting rights act. most of you have probably noticed that district court in washington, d.c. invalidated the enactment of a statute in texas that tried to do this on the grounds that texas could not show that the effect would not be discriminating against the poor and non-white citizens.

that's not a law that applies in places like pennsylvania, where there's no sort of -- we call it pre-clearance, no early effort to determine whether or not the law is likely to create discriminatory impact. so in the south -- south carolina is a state that's next in line to have that kind of review process. that protection is an important one for those who believe that the law is going to have a negative impact. final thing to mention is early voting. in a large number of the southern states the democratic party used early voting quite effectively to get african- americans in particular out to vote. they utilize sunday morning voting after church. getting a large number of people to the polling places. that is not going to be as widely available as it was before. in a number of states arguably because of economic belt- tightening.

the legislatures have decided to curb that somewhat, and to some extent they've been successful. that is likely to have some impact on the extent to which democrats can lock in a number of votes fairly early. the game is going to fundamentally change, to use the phrase, because of this policy. last thing to mention -- all of these laws, as i think i've made clear, are all being sort of seen through the lens of the 1965 voting rights act which was mentioned earlier. the important piece that is sort of looming over all of this discussion is the voting rights act itself is under assault and will likely be challenged in the united states supreme court, if not better the elections, shortly afterwards. so i think much of the conversation about whether or not these laws have discriminatory impact or had in light of some concern that at some point or another this protection might be invalidated by the supreme court.

\[applause] >> again, you're raising all sorts of questions, i'm sure, that folks have and hopefully we'll have some time to get into some of that. next is jacquelyn hall. you wear two hats. one is as a history professor and the other is as the founder of the southern oral history project. that means you're talking to people across the south. you're hearing from the grass roots. so my question is, is there a profound change in the way people live and the way they work in the south today? we've been talking about laws, we've been talking about the economy, politics. how different is this region from what it was 20 years ago, 40 years ago? >> well, -- >> you've got three minutes. >> three minutes, right. \[laughter] >> like my colleagues, i will limit myself. the program in recent years has

been looking at the impact of the civil rights movement on the south. and at both the profound changes that the civil rights movement has brought about in the lives of ordinary people and also the limits of the civil rights movement. and the changes are obvious, the end of legal segregation, of discrimination and the unleashing of the economy. you wouldn't be seeing what you see around you in charlotte if it hadn't been for the civil rights movement. the civil rights movement helped white southerners as much as it did black southerners. but there are also limits to what the civil rights movement achieved, and part of one of the key aspects of that, and has to do with what i think is kinds of a misunderstanding of what the civil rights movement was about, because economic issues,

economic justice, issues of poverty were at the very core of the civil rights movement. it was not just about legal segregation. and those goals had not been -- have not been realized, and i would say another aspect of the civil rights movement that is misunderstood is the kind of distinction in people's minds between the good civil rights movement which succeeded and the bad war on poverty, which failed. these two efforts were totally intermingled. they had the exact same protagonists. the people who had been fighting segregation were the people who were feeting poverty. the segregationists who had been visiting violence and other kinds of retribution on the civil rights activists were

also fighting the war on poverty. and the war on poverty had a lot of successes, which it hasn't gotten credit for. and i think the fact that we don't remember all of that has helped feed a kind of disillusionment with the hope that government effort can actually make a difference in the economy and in poverty. another limitation has to do with the kind of lingering racial resentments and stereotypes on the part of white southerners, and i think i may be actually more optimistic than some of the people on the panel in the sense that i think that those racial attitudes have changed profoundly. we don't realize how much we changed, unless you go back and actually look at what kind of

veer length civil rights. and it lingers not just because of the legacy of slavery and segregation, not just because they've been there all along and it's going to take a long time to get rid of them, although that's certainly powerful, but because of things that have deliberate policies and propaganda that has intensified and stirred up and renewed those feelings. and they have to do with political strategy. the southern strategy, which has been alluded to and kind of broadly conceived, how is the republican party going to win over the south? well, part of that strategy had to do with demonizing the policies that came out of the

civil rights movement and were meant to realize the gains of the civil right movement. affirmative action, for example, was one of the kind of wedge issues that was used to bring white workers into the republican party by creating the belief that this is a zero- sum game and if you open up opportunities to blacks and women, why working men will lose. the attack on bussing, which was aimed mainly at white suburbanites who would disavow over racism but who very much believed in homers rights and were very much blind to the way in which -- what one scholar has called affirmative action for whites, which was in place from "the new deal" into the civil rights movement, had created these kind of white enclaves, these neighborhoods

that needed neighborhood schools and then, of course, the welfare queen. and this is still there. this is still behind the -- it's all coded now, but this identification of welfare with african-americans, and the notion that these are people who are getting something for nothing, these are people who are lazy, this is very, very powerful. and it helps not only to perpetuate these racial stereotypes, but it helps, again, to discredit efforts to create and maintain a strong safety net. another thing i want to mention in terms of successes that

people don't notice and limit to what the civil rights movement has been able to do has been in school desegregation. in the 1980's the south had the most integrated schools in the country. that had to do with federal oversight, but it also had to do with -- take charlotte as an example. swan v. mecklenburg, 1971, a landmark case, which did what you have to do if you're going to integrate the schools. it said that you cannot have all white suburbs and integrated inner cities. it has to be a metropolitan plan. you have to have two-way bussing because of entrenched residential segregation, which is there because of public policies in the past, and that was a hard-fought battle but it was embraced by an interracial coalition, which included white, blue-collar workers, and

it became a tremendous point of pride for the city. and that has been -- is now being completely reversed because of the decisions of the conservative supreme court, which has made it impossible to create those metropolitan integration plans. so now the schools of charlotte and throughout the south are resegregating. so in sum, i would say, so what are the limits, what are the challenges? these lingering stereotypes and along with the lives in the south of modern forms of segregation. i think the convergence that we're seeing is that southern --

i agreed completely that the growth of metropolitan populations is good for the democratic party. it's where our hope lies. but the most segregated cities in the country right now are all north of the mason-dixon line and they all have to do with defacto segregation, and that is the kind of segregation that we're going to have to the metropolitan cities of the new, new, new aouth. and then, of course, there's the entrenchment of rural poverty and the continued association between race and class, which i know that gene can talk about better than i can. >> great, thank you very much, jacquelyn. \[applause] so you did, jacquelyn, mention poverty. in fact at one point you said the war on poverty had a lot of successes in the south. so i'm going to turn to you,

gene nichol, who is a distinguished law professor and head of the center on poverty, work and opportunity. there hasn't been a lot of talk in this campaign about poverty, but there's been a lot of talk about jobs and about unemployment in the south. expand on what we just heard from jacquelyn. what role does poverty play in the political landscape? and if you want to, talk about how poverty plays off against the middle class and how the middle class is such a factor in this campaign. >> judy, i will do my best to do that. let me say, too, it's great to see you all here and be part of this panel. this being the south, i should note that this panel was to begin at 11:30 on sunday morning, which is proof positive that journalists are heathens. \[laughter] the only programs we believe in on sunday morning at 11:30 come out of the pulpit.

now, i'm a lawyer, so i'm an admitted heathen of long standing. it's nice to have your company. i would say, too, that i, like peter, i do a lot of programs, which means i never expected to speak this morning. forou'll have to forgive me a meandering presentation. i'm going to talk about poverty. poverty in the united states, but more pointedly, poverty in the south. one of my favorite writers is wallace stegner, who writes not about the south, but the west. stegner characterizes the west as the native home of hope. and i think he means it in the good sense and in the bad sense, too. sort of the big rock candy mountain notion. i always thought you could

borrow a bit from stegner and characterize the south as the native home of poverty in the united states, which means that we have more poor people and more political leaders who are untroubled by it than the rest of the country. so i think neither of those are a high compliment. you know the broad numbers about poverty generally, though, as judy said, we never hear these discussed in political campaigns. some discussion of the middle class, a lot of the discussion of the wealthy, but almost nothing of those at the bottom. but in the united states, over 15% of us live in poverty, some 47 million. the highest raw numbers likely in our history and the highest

percentage in over 20 years. the figures are worse by race, with black, latino and native americans closer to 30% living in poverty. it's worse by age. kids, the youngest, the most vulnerable, the poorest, over 22% in the country, over 25% of our kids in north carolina live in poverty. and then if you cut that again according to race, in north carolina it seems to me a sort of badge of humiliation, 40% of our children of color live in poverty. numbers that are tough to mention in polite company and out loud, numbers which almost indicate a failure of a commonwealth. the south, though, is worse. the figures are worse, the economic circumstance is worse than the rest of the country.

if you look at it by region, according to the census data, about 17% of the south lives in poverty and the other three regions would be between 12% and 15%. uninsured, over 19% of us in the south are uninsured. the rest of the country ranges from 12% to 17%. there was new data released on this front last week, which is not in your materials. it indicated that florida now has over 25% uninsured. i didn't hear that mentioned in tampa. there was a lot of discussion about how bad the affordable care act was, but no discussion of 1/4 of floridians having no health care coverage. the states with the highest poverty rate in the united states, eight of the 10 are southern states, all but

virginia in the south, all of the southern states are above the national average, some way above, with states like mississippi having over 30% living in poverty. 10 states with child poverty over 25%. nine of those are in the south. there are six million kid living in extreme poverty. that means income of less than half the federal poverty standard, and of those six million, 42% come from the south. there are 11 states with over 10% of their children living in extreme poverty, and 10 of those 11 are in the south. the pugh study, a new one, relatively new on economic mobility indicated that the

lowest economic mobility in the united states is in louisiana, oklahoma, south carolina, alabama, florida, kentucky, mississippi, north carolina and texas. so this picture is pervasive. and in the south it's not getting better at the moment. the south was the only section of the country in the last census where these poverty figures got significantly worse. the next point being congenial to being concerned with poverty. this is not a southern attribute. i think we've seen that recently. states are refusing to accept stimulus money, for example. some are more heavily loaded in the south. we did sort of an odd look at

the support in opposition to the affordable care act. very dominantly those states with the highest level of uninsured expressed the greatest opposition to the affordable care act and almost vice versa in an outcome which would surprise madison. the states having the most to benefit frequently expressed in the greatest opposition. and similar arguments when it comes to medicaid expansion. great opposition so far in texas, florida, mississippi, louisiana, south carolina and georgia. alabama, where apparently there would be a 53% reduction in the uninsured under medicaid expansions, saks 49.9%, and yet a vehement opposition. so we can debate why this is so. why would it be that we have the most poor people and the

politics which is most deadly opposed to doing things about it? that has been debated in the south for the last 100 years at least. why is it that the south treats poor people the way it does? different theories from w.j. cash and bob dylan, sort of only a pawn in the game. i'm not going to try and answer that definitively. a lot of people here know much more about it than i do, including ferrell, and hodding or jackie. first of all the south has in common with the rest of the country the invisibility of poverty, the removal of poverty from our political agenda. the removal of the concern of the bottom 30% sort of across the board.

so if that's true, the united states generally, it is certainly true in the south. i think we have in the south the "what's the matter with kansas" phenomenon, which is some version of social conservative joining with economic conservatives, even if they end up not really getting their part of the bargain but voting against the economic interests of those at the bottom. and then jackie has opened the door and sort of carried for me the harder news, which is that whatever else, reaction to poverty is even more racialized in the south than it is in the rest of the country, then it becomes more visible all the time. we just saw a political convention last week which was sort of remarkable on this front in its rhetoric and in its outlook.

i'm going to end with this. but i kept having in my mind stephen colbert sort of coming to the front of the republican convention and going, "hail, white people!" with kind of an astonishing look even from the aesthetics of our polarization. so i think there could be great argument about why we have reached the stage that we have, but we do seem to have more poor folks in the south and a less powerful commitment to do something about it than much of the rest of the nation. \[applause] >> ok. so provocative comments from five folks in a row. and i'm already -- i'm going to warn all of you. i'm coming to you next as soon

as we hear from our final panelist. i'm coming to you for questions, so we're going to get right to that. jesse white you ran the appalachian regional commission for many years. you looked toe rural areas in the scout. was it scott who called them the non-core county? here we are in the banking capital of the world in charlotte. are there two south, the urban well-to-do south and then the south that we just heard gene nichol describe? >> i think that's a pretty good summary of where the south has come. i think the comment i would like to leave you with is that the south is no longer either mabry r.f.d. or the booming sun belt. it's a lot more complicated than that. the images that the american people have been left with of the south, neither one really obtain.

southernve seen in economic development for the last 50 or 60 years you've heard about today, the convergence of the per capita income. the south was about 50% of the u.s. average in the great depression. we got up to about 90% 20 years ago. we've seen the urbanization, the metropolitanization of the south's economy. we've seen successes in technology development. a lot of good things that have changed the face of the south. but what these recessions have revealed over the last 30 years are the tremendous impact of globalization and technology. and it has ripped the covers off of the bed of the southern economy and really has revealed

two south, judy, like you were talking about. if you look at the investment patterns of public dollars in the south in the last 50 or 60 years, we have invested very well compared to other states in post-secondary education. we've invested incredibly poorly in elementary and secondary education until recently, and it's created in bifurcated workforce. the top half of us are globally competitive with anybody, the bottom 1/3 has been left behind. and as we moved away from an economy based on cost advantages and mass production, which was tied to this branch plant recruitment strategy of economic development, and these jobs have started disappearing, it's left this bottom 1/3 high and dry. there's also been a tremendous spacial impact. i mean, we actually still have more distress in urban areas by

numbers, but in terms of percentages and in terms of outlook and in terms of prospect, the rural areas are really have been left behind. i guess i won't take but another second just to conclude that in an election that is supposed to be all about the economy, as a southern white person from the same state as hodding -- you'll notice you run across a lot of mississippians because we don't live there anybody. we've got a cabal working to take over carolina. there are several of us there. \[laughter] but it's always astonished me how my -- excuse me -- fellow white southerners almost consistently vote against the economic interest of the region from which they come.

i mean, especially since reagan. the broad policy of the republican party has been to reduce income taxes, which helps the south less, because we have lower incomes, and reduce spending on social and economic programs, which hurts the south more because we have more at- risk people and more people left behind. and time and time and time again white southerners seem to be shooting their own toes off. i've never really quite understood it, except for these other factors we've talked about, which is race, guns, gays. you know the social and cultural currents that are affecting voting behaviors.

so it will be interesting to see how -- if southerners return to voting their economic interests. i wouldn't hold my breath. thank you. \[applause] >> well, thank you. i see the clock is ticking. we have 12 minutes. it's up to you. who has a question? this gentleman right here. >> thank you. charlie of north carolina, democratic national convention. stratagem for missed opportunity. \[inaudible/] is that going to help carry north carolina or not? >> i didn't know if we had to be recognized. it was a great idea at the time for sure. \[laughter]

again, i hit on the point earlier, and i'll be quick about this. racial coalition building was actually quite significant in this state. and still, in the state legislature there are people who can appeal to folks in a racially missed constituency, and that's true both for whites who have done that traditionally in the south but also for african-americans. i think for a variety of reasons, some of them dealing with external factors, the economy not doing especially well has not been good for white, working-class voters, which is one part of that coalition. but also, again, given all these different changes that are -- if they are affected, likely to limit african-american voter turnout. that, too, could be a real threat to the democratic party. but the extent to which one thinks in the long term, there have to be inroads in the south. the population is moving

southward and westward. so if you're going to be competitive in the long term, you've got to have an imprint here. so whether or not in this election it's effective, i leave to others to discuss, but i think at least as an initial decision, it wasn't a dumb one. >> hodding, do you want to add a thought to that? >> no. it goes on at some length, and i won't. >> all right. another question. yes, sir, right here. >> we talked about race, voting, taxes, poverty, education. we have not talked about the deficit. would you comment on that in the context of the south and north carolina. >> peter, do you want to jump on that first? >> i think we had a pretty good solution in some ways to an initial approach to the deficit

problem coming in part from one of our native sons. it's been lost in some ways, i think, by january 1, 2013, some version of that will come back, regardless of who gets elected. i think the bigger problem right now, i think -- and i think what you'll hear next week -- is that it's too soon, really, to worry in great -- right now about the deficit. bond rates, interest rates are so low right now. the economy is still in a very precarious position. so i think at least in charlotte next week there will be higher priority economic issues than the deficit at least over the next six months. >> for someone like me, anyway, we do have an economic deficit which is challenging and powerful. we also have a priorities deficit, it seems to me.

a country doesn't have to come to the conclusion, for example, that it's going to tax capital gains at half the rate that you're going to tax much of the income of the rest of the workforce. it doesn't have to decide that we're going to have a great and powerful housing project in the united states, that is the mortgage deduction. it's just that maybe 80% of it is going to go to those making over $100,000 a year. our state legislature doesn't have to, as they did just a few weeks ago, cut $350-something million to wealthier corporations, as they decide to cut in half the allocation to food banks, giving everything that's going on -- given everything that's going on in north carolina. so i do think we have an economic deficit and we have a money deficit as well. >> ray, it's amazing to me that we have managed in the process

of our lives together to take off the table from any kind of intelligent conversation whatsoever a military budget which has no relationship whatsoever to what faces us as an international threat, that we are paying in our military side as if we faced five russians simultaneously in the soviet union days and need to keep raising that budget, democrat and republican. now, look, if the wise men of the simpson bowles commission or the bowles-simpson commission really were serious about what they were doing as opposed to taking three from category a and three -- they would have been done something very, very serious, not the get their attention by letting this damn budget be sort of slashed arbitrarily, but actually have done something on the budgetary spending. not at that's any more solution than taxing people like you and me. but it is part of the solution about which i don't see how you

have a solution without. and it's funny, except, of course, we live in north carolina. we live in virginia, and we live in florida. and you know what else lives in north carolina and virginia and florida? the biggest allocation of federal spending that god could help for in bases and in location of servicemen who are the great pump-priming example that southerners love and pretend is not federal pump- priming. i mean -- anyway. \[laughter] >> we don't get a lot of the actually military construction. i mean, it's mostly base money, i think. >> we already paid it out, boy. come on. >> i think our defense budget is more than the next 17 countries combined, something like that. >> maybe 40. >> question, question. yes, sir. >> i'd like to ask the

panelists, how long can we continue to go down this path that you have all described without addressing a single one of the issues that confront us today? how long can we continue down this path? >> i woke up one day and i said to myself, why is it that in a set of circumstances which in other places and other times would have had people out marching, would have people out at levels of protests which would be hair-raising, we don't have any of it, that somehow we are at a stage of acceptance, resignation, passivity, intimidation -- no, i don't think intimidation, but there's something out there that we're drinking. and i'll be honest with you, because i despise much of the medium except the one that my dear friend is working with, one of the things you've got

which you never had in society before was an ability to flip a switch and quit thinking about anything except the entertainment in front of you. you don't sit there plotting too many damn revolutions while you're sitting there -- i mean, and i'm a horrible movie- matcher, so i know how it is. but we have a lot of stuff that we are able to do, which is escapist stuff, which will take you out of it. i honestly, you know, being a mississippian, when i think to myself, judy ran a thing on terry sanford six years ago, five years ago up here and it was a great thing about him. but the thing about terry which so got us who were elsewhere was he went right to the heart and said, look, let's talk about education. let's talk about something that actually affects everybody. who the hell is talking about something that actually affects everybody?

and you asked the question how long that can go on. i do not know. i don't understand it. but y'all are all smart. why is it, big boy? you're the man that brings them out into the streets. huh? >> i guess the question is, what comes next? >> yes, sir, i know, i know. >> who wants to tackle that? \[laughter] yes, right here. >> thank you. >> i'm a daughter of richmond, virginia, but from college on i've lived in the godless state of massachusetts, and i am struck again by my return to the south of how prominent the racial lens is. and as we know, lenses can illuminate, but they can also obfuscate. so without denying the importance of race as a factor

in many of the south's trends, stories, narratives, how would you characterize the lens of gender, of women? white southern women, women of , based on, you know, oral history reports of women's perspectives on life here compared to other regions of the country? love to hear something about women. >> jacquelyn, do you want to weigh in, and if either scott or farrell have some data they want to throw in as we. >> yeah, i was really struck that -- >> why did you pick jackie? \[laughter] >> i was raising my hand. i was struck that in the beginning when we were talking about even the polling data we didn't -- gender didn't come up at all.

we didn't hear anything about abortion and so on. but then -- this is a really complicated question, and i just would say two things about it. one is that -- and, again, this comes from the work that the program is doing. we are now focusing on documenting the women's movement in the south and contrary to the assumptions that there was not a movement, there was and there is, a very powerful one which its to be understood -- needs to be understood and seen more clearly, but it is also true that to my mind, this has not come up. one of the biggest things that obama has going for him is the gender gap. this is so important.

women have been -- there has been a gender gap for i do not know how many elections, including women in the south wind for bill clinton in much larger proportions than white women -- white women and white man i am talking about. however, the gender gap has been narrowing in the south so in 2008, i think the gender gap in the south, and like anywhere else, almost closed. there was not any difference between white men and white women in voting in 2008. 2012, i do not know. in north carolina, the polls are showing there still is a gender gap with white women going for, more than white men but not -- the gap is not as great in the rest of the country.

when you look at women of color, that change is completely and the gender gap opens back up again. -- that changes completely and the gender gap opens back up again. one of the challenges is to address themselves to women in the south and open that gender gap back out. >> i am told by the losses here that we're going to wrap up. it is after 2:00 p.m. deadline i want to thank everyone for coming but let's all thank these extraordinary panelists for their presentation. [applause] and thankst to sarah and scott, but also to all of you. >> the guests at the playbook

guests will talk about the democratic national convention. 8:30 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> during the convention we're using social media to take a close to the convention and get you a behind-the-scenes look. using twitter, we will see what delegates are trading and other c-span viewers are tweeted about the convention. in facebook we're showing images and and graphics and the major speeches. we are taking your action and reaction from delegates and on .oaogle + and all on c-span.org/ convention2012. >> find out what others are

saying at c-span.org/ campaign2012. >> every minute, every speech live on c-span and c-span radio and online. featured speakers tuesday night include julian castro and first lady michelle obama. and elizabeth warren on wednesday and former president bill clinton. thursday, vice-president joe biden and president barack obama. use our convention have to make ensure video clips. >> in the end, that is what this election is about. do we participate in the politics of cynicism, or do we participate in the politics of hope? john kerry calls on us to hope. john edwards calls us to hope. i'm not talking about blind

optimism. the almost willful ignorance that thinks, women will go away if we'd just do not think about it or health-care prices will -- the health care crisis will solve itself. >> carry your own opinion and connect with other viewers with twitter and google hangouts. convention how bad c-span -- hub at c-span.org/campaign2012. >> networks are of increasing consequence. it is driving political movement, the backbone for communications and commerce and so for us, it is a tool but it is an important tool. we use it for communications, we have 288 facebook pages with 13 million friends, almost 200 official twitter accounts with a couple million followers. we're using it for communications. of greater consequence in my opinion is part of what we're looking at are some tough

traditional foreign-policy challenges and the about how we can apply to our strengths the ability and to renovate and how we can apply those to a given for an apology challenge. >> more about the use of technology in u.s. foreign policy monday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. >> watch gavel-to-gavel coverage democratic national convention. every minute, every speech live here. next speeches from past conventions including hillary clinton in 1996 and robert kennedy in 1964, and ann richards 1988 keynote speech. hillary rodham clinton spoke at the 1996 democratic convention. the first city published her best-selling book. this is the year she testified in front of a grand jury about

her investment in and involvement with the whitewater development corporation. her remarks here are half an hour.

♪ [cheers and applause] >> thank you. thank you. thank you, tipper. thank you also much. thank you. thank you all and good evening.

i am overwhelmed by your welcome. and i want to thank my friend, tipper gore. you know, we are gathered here together -- [cheers and applause] to have a really good time. i am overwhelmed and very

grateful to all of you. [cheers and applause] you know, after this reception, i think you are ready for the rest of this convention. because -- which has already been so positive and good. i know and you know that chicago is my kind of town.

and, chicago is my kind of village. i have so many friends here, people who have been important to me all my life and it seems like every single one of them has given me advice on the speech. one friend suggested that i ever -- appear here tonight with a child sitting guerrilla from the zoo. this friend exchanged -- explained this is a typical chicagoan. with a heart of gold underneath. another friend advised me i

should cut my hair and color red orange and then change my name to hillary "rodman" clinton, but after considering days and countless other suggestions, i decided to do tonight what i have been doing for more than 25 years. i want to talk about what matters most in our lives and in our nation. children and families. [cheers and applause] i wish we could be sitting around a kitchen table, just us, talking about our hopes and fears about our children's features. for bill and me, family has been the center of our lives, but we also know that our family, like

your family, is part of a larger community that can help or hurt our best efforts to raise our child. right now in our biggest cities and our smallest towns there are boys and girls being tucked gently into bed, and there are boys and girls who have no one to call mom or dad and no place to call home. right now there are mothers and fathers just finishing a long day's work and there are mothers and fathers just going to work, some to their second or third jobs of day. right now there are parents worrying, what if the babysitter is sick tomorrow or how can we pay for college this fall? and right now there are parents

despairing about gang members and drug pushers on the corners in their neighborhoods. right now there are parents questioning a popular culture that glamorizes sex and violence, smoking and drinking and teaches children that the logos on their clothes are more valued than the generosity in their hearts. [cheers and applause] but also, ght now, there are dedicated teachers preparing their lessons for the new school year. [cheers and applause] there are volunteers tutoring and coaching children. there are doctors and nurses caring for sick children, police officers working to help kids stay out of trouble and off drugs. drugs.